Plans, Visors, and the Color Red!

Earlier this week I spent some time putting together my training plan for the half ironman distance. I had saved a training plan from an issue of Triathlete magazine and decided to laminate each week so that I could take it with me to the pool.  One of my friends brings a Ziploc bag of workouts to the pool and initially that was my plan but I got tired of typing the swim workouts up by the 3rd week of the plan.  I think my revised direction is going to be just as awesome.  The nice thing about laminating the cards is that I can use a dry erase marker to make notes and then clean them off for the next training cycle.  The cards are color coordinated based on whether the weeks are build, recovery, race specific.  I know, I'm a dork!!!

Earlier this week I took a gamble and ordered some Headsweats visors.  My sister loves their brand of hats and we both have been wanting to try their visors.  The Headsweats website offers grab bag options for many of their products in the sale section.  Even better, the more you buy the cheaper the grab bag options are.  I was bold and ordered 3 grab bag options and one full price visor...just in case! The box arrived today and I got quite the lucky mixture of hats.  I'm loving the hot pink visor...it has a silver logo on it.  I sent my sister a picture of the choices and so we'll see which two she picks.  My grab bag visors were just $8 each and the full price plain gray one was $24.  I think the grab bag is definitely the way to go!!!

Today's swim workout was a really strong workout.  Swimming with former collegiate swimmers is a sure way to get a good workout! Today's coach was Jim who was in the lane with almost all former collegiate swimmers.  Those boys were kicking butt during the workout but my lane did our best to hang on!  The workout that Jim selected for the group was 4 x 400.  On the surface that probably sounds pretty boring, but we did something different within each 400.  The first 400 was done as kick/drill/kick/drill.  The second 400 was an entire pull set with the focus on breath control so breathing every 3,5,7,3 strokes for each 100.  The third 400 was choice so long as your second 200 was faster than the first.  The final 400 was descending in speed each 100.  I ended up with 2000 for the day with my warm up and cool down included.  I think I'll be feeling the pull set tomorrow!

After the swim I headed to my friend Kyla's for a snack before starting a bike ride. We both were hungry after finishing the swim so we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  We eventually headed out for a bike ride and selected a route that would offer some shade.  I had done a simulated hill ride on the trainer Thursday night so my quads were definitely not the most responsive on the uphills we encountered.  Our ride was short but lots of fun.  We treated ourselves to sno cones after the ride...could my tongue get any more red! I had strawberry margarita in case you were curious!